The ABCs of kindergarten - catalyst-chicago.org

different people picking them up and dropping
them off.”
Walker lost touch with parents who stopped
bringing their children to Ashe when the school
went to half-day. She stayed, but had to find a
child care provider who could watch her son
and drop him off at school three days a week.
Now she works from home, making the schedule
more manageable.
With a $700 million-plus budget deficit on the
horizon and federal stimulus money running
out, full-day programs paid for by the district
may be in jeopardy. Among the schools that
could lose out is Belding Elementary, a racially
diverse school in Irving Park on the North Side.
Principal Heather Yutzy estimates that it
would cost $40,000 to $45,000 a year to pick up
the tab for one full-day class—and Belding has
two. The money would have to come from the
school’s Title I discretionary funds, which also
cover teacher training and extra classroom materials.
In a worst-case scenario, Yutzy says she’d
try to foot the bill but is not sure she would be
able cover it.
At Belding, 80 percent of children qualify for
free or reduced-price lunches. While most CPS
parents are lower-income or working-class and
sorely in need of full-day kindergarten, Yutzy
says some wealthier parents who have the option
of staying home with children are less enthused
about it.
The kindergarten students at Belding get
plenty of literacy activity as well as time for
“extras,” including Arabic instruction, art and
physical education. They also have more time to
develop social and emotional skills.
The daily schedule includes time for a class
meeting; literacy activities focused on word
structure and reading sight words; independent
writing time; an hour for small-group reading
instruction and reading centers, where students
do small-group literacy activities like silent
reading and working with magnetic letters to
spell words; a read-aloud by the teacher; math
and social studies; and “choose time,” when students
can pick what they want to do.
On an unseasonably warm early-spring day,
gym teacher Stacey Hale lets her students run
wild around the playground. She explains that
after the children finished a fitness walk around
the block, the warm weather prompted her to
give them some unstructured time outside and
a break from the hula-hoop unit they’re working
on in class.
“Everyone needs a breath of fresh air,” Hale
says, showing the children how to use the playground’s
zipline (a device that lets them zoom
through the air holding on to a bar attached to a
cord), offering them high-fives as they get ready
to go down the slide, and hugging anyone who
falls down. She gives a push to children on the
swings, then responds to the cries of a scared
boy who’s gotten stuck on top of the jungle
gym.
One scene shows how children are developing
critical social skills. A crying girl, being comforted
by her friends, seeks shelter under the
equipment. One boy loudly accuses another of
hitting her. “You don’t hit a girl,” he says. “It was
an accident,” the suspect insists.
Hale points out: “They are great listeners.
They are really respectful of each other.”
Later, during Arabic instruction, the students
learn an alphabet song and listen to their teacher
read a folktale about Aladdin in English—in
other words, extra literacy enrichment.
By later in the spring, they are following directions
the teacher gives in Arabic, and they are beginning
to learn to read in the language—matching
characters with sounds to form words.
At Ashe Elementary, classes run just two and
a half hours a day, not including time for meals.
Students get an hour of gym, music and library
up to three times a week, which means that on
some days, there’s just 90 minutes left to cram
in small-group reading instruction and math, as
well as the occasional science and social studies
lesson.
One fall morning a few weeks into the year,
Hamilton has her students sit down for breakfast.
“Quickly get a couple bites,” she tells the
class. Some of the children gnaw on pears as if
they are drumsticks.
“I’m going to call you by table so you can
throw your trash away, whether we’re finished
or not,” Hamilton says. “You have to come on
time so you can get breakfast in. We have a lot to
learn, and a lot to do.”
Besides time for extras, a full-day program
would give Hamilton’s students more time for
practice on basics such as paying attention
in class. Plus, Hamilton would get more
opportunity to reinforce her expectations
through repetition.
“I have to put a lot of stock in my kids,” Hamilton
says. “I’m not going to worry about what
the parents are going to do. I’ve got to help the
children help themselves. You just cannot tell
them (once), and think they’re going to get it.
They need a lot.”
Hamilton estimates that when breakfast,
lunch and “specials” such as gym and music are
taken out, her students get just seven hours a
week of instruction—not more than a couple of
days of teaching in a full-day class.
The lack of instruction time in a half day,
coupled with weeks at the beginning of the year
Latino kindergarten gap
Overcrowding in Latino schools is likely to blame
for the gap in access to full-day kindergarten
programs, according to the Latino Policy Forum.
Research has found that English-language learners
who attend half-day kindergarten programs are
more likely to be retained before 2nd grade.
full-day kindergarten Chicago Illinois
Latino 68% 56%
White 77% 70%
Black 91% 86%
English-language learners
with full-day kindergarten
CPS schools with less than 5% ELL 92%
Schools with more than 25% ELL 73%
Note: Chicago data (top) are from 2007 and are the latest available.
State data are from 2011. Full-day data are the latest available online.
Sources: Illinois State Board of Education, Catalyst Chicago analysis of
Chicago Public Schools online directory
when the class size was too large, has put students
behind where they would otherwise be,
Hamilton says.
In mid-April, fewer than one-third of her students
are working in the 1st-grade primer she
uses to get students reading stories of four or
five sentences in length. After a year of full-day
kindergarten, Hamilton notes, all of them would
be reading from the book.
Schools where more than 25 percent of students
are English-language learners are more
than three times as likely to lack a full-day kindergarten
program as schools where fewer than
5 percent are English learners.
That statistic is troubling because of the
proven benefit of full-day programs for these
children. A study of ELL students in Los Angeles,
published in March in the Journal of Policy
Analysis and Management, found that by 2nd
grade, those who attended full-day kindergarten
were much less likely to be held back than
those who went to half-day programs.
Reyna Hernandez, a research and policy associate
at the Latino Policy Forum in Chicago,
says that kindergarten—the “bridge” to the K-12
system—plays an important role for Latino students
since many of them lack academic school
readiness skills.
“To have such a large gap in offerings really
is very troublesome,” Hernandez says. “It just
compounds the problem.”
Many studies of preschool programs have
found that the academic gains children make
peter out by 2nd or 3rd grade. Full-day kindergarten
could help prevent the loss.
“Transitioning from high-quality early childhood
into high-quality K-3 really makes a differ-
www.catalyst-chicago.org 7